The WELL: How 5 Became 8

A luxury Center Grove condo tower will be three stories higher than rules prescribe thanks to a controversial task force’s recommendation and a little-noticed, 11^th-hour tweak to a proposed change in the city’s zoning code.

The 2023 zoning code change a developer is using to increase the height of a luxury residential tower in Center Grove was originally intended to exempt Coconut Grove from its provisions but city officials removed the exemption – with no public notice – just moments before a final commission vote.

The measure passed unanimously with no discussion, paving the way for Coconut Grove-based Terra Group to scrap plans for a five-story condo project on the corner of Tigertail Avenue and Mary Street and replace it with an eight-story, mixed-use luxury development, The WELL Coconut Grove.

Records show that the controversial code change – allowing a height increase from five to eight stories on properties in some cases up to a mile from a Metrorail station – appeared on the September 29, 2023 commission agenda with a provision to exempt Coconut Grove and other areas protected with a Neighborhood Conservation District (NCD) zoning overlay. 

But as commissioners prepared to vote on the amendment, then-City Attorney Vicky Mendez noted for the record a “substitution” to the proposed ordinance, replacing the Grove-wide exemption with one that protects only the Grove’s single-family neighborhoods.

The change opened up many of the Grove’s key corridors zoned for five stories – 27^th Avenue, Bird Avenue, Grand Avenue, Douglas Road and others in proximity to transit hubs – to the new eight-story limit for new construction.

Mendez says by email she has no recollection of who proposed the last-minute revised language, or why. 

Center Grove residents have galvanized opposition to The WELL, claiming the 361,000-square-foot project is out of scale with the neighborhood, will increase traffic, and will do little to promote mass transit use. The newly formed homeowners association Center Grove Neighbors has formed a working group to monitor the project, while another group has met with an attorney to study possible legal and policy initiatives to challenge the project.

The uproar has prompted Miami District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo to consider sponsoring new legislation, perhaps as soon as next month, to remove the Grove entirely from the bonus height provisions, a commission staff aide has confirmed. 

The 2023 code change allows properties zoned for no more than five stories to build as high as eight if they fall within biking or pedestrian distance – generally somewhere between a half mile and one mile, depending on road conditions – from mass transit hubs such as Metrorail stations. 

Unlike other local and state zoning provisions that incentivize higher density and increased building height, the city’s rule does not require the project to include affordable or workforce housing.

The WELL is the first project in Coconut Grove to apply for the three-story bonus height under the new rules. In December another development group announced plans for an eight-story luxury condo tower, The Lincoln Coconut Grove, on Southwest 27 Avenue just a few steps from The WELL construction site. City officials acknowledge that others are expected to follow.

Civic groups and local residents opposed to the height increase say they were blindsided by the new rules, believing all of the Grove was carved out from its provisions, not just the single-family neighborhoods specified in the 11^th-hour revisions prior to the commission vote. No one from the Grove spoke out during the meeting’s public comment period to oppose the legislation, records show. 

Developers and land use attorneys had been pushing the change for years, arguing that the T5 zoning classification, which allows a maximum of five stories, is the only one (apart from single-family areas) that does not include programs to allow “bonus” stories to increase building height.

Indeed, city officials say the 2023 code change is one of several proposed two years earlier by an ad hoc committee – the Miami 21 Task Force – to update the city’s zoning code.

But critics have labeled the exercise a farce, arguing the appointment of three prominent development industry lobbyists among the 12-member task force – including its chairperson, land-use attorney and Builders Association of South Florida president Melissa Tapanes – posed an intractable conflict of interest.

Two other members of the task force are now key players in The WELL Coconut Grove: Bernardo Fort-Brescia, whose Grove-based architecture firm Arquitectonica is designing the project; and Iris Escarra, Terra Group’s long-time land-use attorney, who is helping to securing the bonus height from city zoning officials.

Despite its recommendation by the task force and the backing of city planning staff and the city manager, the T5 bonus height’s path to new zoning law wasn’t entirely smooth. 

The city’s Planning, Zoning & Appeals Board, which must weigh in on all such code changes, approved the measure but on a heated split vote, and not before one member told others he’s “terrified to think what might happen to neighborhoods that have fought really hard not to get six to eight stories looking over their backyards.” 

Someone may have listened. Three months later, in September 2023, when the legislation reached the city commission for its second and final vote, language had been added to exempt Coconut Grove – and Miami’s Coral Gate neighborhood – from the law’s provisions. 

But the city attorney’s “floor substitution” amended the legislation yet again, narrowing the carve-out to only single-family neighborhoods – where the law would not have applied anyway – thus unexpectedly exposing large sections of the Grove to the three-story bonus height.

It’s not clear whether commissioners knew of the precise nature of the last-minute revision prior to what video reveals to be a hurried, yea or nay vote on a bundle of zoning changes that included this one. Even now, the final version does not appear among the meeting’s packet of support documents. 

District 4 Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who made the motion from the dais to approve the ordinance, said through a staff aide that he was not available to answer questions about the 2023 code change, referring a Spotlight reporter to the City Attorney’s Office. 

Former District 2 Commissioner Sabina Covo, who represented the Grove at the time and who seconded Reyes’ motion, did not respond to detailed text and email messages requesting comment. 

Contacted by the Spotlight, Miami City Attorney George Wysong, who replaced Vicky Mendez a year ago, said he would investigate the last-minute language substitution. 

But former District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell, a Coconut Grove resident whose seven-year tenure ended in 2022 and is now a candidate for city mayor, calls the move “procedurally improper,” perhaps to the point of rendering it legislatively invalid. 

“A substitution of this magnitude, that late in the game, really betrays the transparent nature of the process,” he said. “Changes of an incredibly substantive nature, such as this, should be proffered as an amendment to the legislation, in advance, so that everyone – commissioners and the public – have every opportunity to understand what is being voted on.”

Terra Group and its partners acquired the Tigertail property in 2021 for $21.7 million and filed plans with the city to build an Arquitectonica-designed five-story residential building named Residences in the Grove. 

But last December, shortly after demolition of existing structures began at the site, Terra announced an entirely new vision for the project, partnering with New York-based health and fitness branding company The WELL to build a high-end “wellness living community” featuring a health club, office space, ground floor retail, 382 parking spaces and 194 condo units. Preconstruction prices range from $1.4 million to $5.8 million.

Renderings show it rising to eight stories.